Politics

The Spanish Government is willing to “dialogue” with the Catalan Government, but has closed the door to a self-determination referendum, because it “liquidates the essence of the [Spanish] nation”, said the Spanish Vice President, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, this Wednesday. Requested by the Catalan Socialist MP Meritxell Batet and the spokesman of the Spanish alternative left party Podemos, Iñigo Errejón, to permit reform of the Constitution in order to respond to Catalonia’s independence movement, the politician stated that to do so “requires consensus on the point of departure and arrival”. Furthermore, she stressed the necessity to achieve “an agreement on the diagnosis of the problems and the solutions”, a goal that currently is not possible given the disagreement seen in the Spanish Parliament, she added.

The Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, is suspicious regarding Spain’s executive willingness to dialogue. During this Wednesday’s session of control in the Parliament, Puigdemont stated that Catalonia deserves a bilateral negotiation with the Government in Madrid and that he considers anything other than this a way to “dilute and disguise what is really going on” in Catalonia and therefore “confuse public opinion”. Pro-independence radical left CUP MP, Mireia Boya, went a bit further and urged Puigdemont not to go along with Spain’s “siren calls” in relation to its supposed openness to dialogue. On the other hand, Xavier García Albiol, the leader of the Catalan branch of Spain’s governing party PP, called for Puigdemont not to be like “a statue” before the “signals” sent by the Spanish Government. 

The Government’s draft for the 2017 budget was published in the Parliament’s Official Journal this Tuesday. On Wednesday, the different groups in the Catalan Chamber will be able to present appeals and the whole bill will be discussed on the 20th of December. “This is the best budget possible”, Catalan Vice President and Minister for Economy and Tax Office, Oriol Junqueras, stated right after presenting the draft. “The time of cutbacks is over”, he assured and emphasised that the budget for 2017 has been enhanced in comparison to the previous one “both as a whole and in each department”. Indeed, the budget for 2017 allocates €1.1 billion more to social expenditure than the bill for 2015 – which was extended for 2016. The Health System with €8.7 billion and Education and Universities with €5.5 billion are the areas with the highest amounts allocated.

The Government’s draft budget for 2017 presented to the Parliament's President, Carme Forcadell, this Tuesday includes an allocation of €5.8 million to guarantee that the pro-independence referendum scheduled for September will be carried out. In particular, the bill establishes €5 million for electoral processes and €0.8 million for participation. Moreover, the budget also includes hidden allocations which would allow the referendum to take place despite the inevitable suspension of the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC). In 2014, the budget also allocated €6 million oriented toward holding the 9-N symbolic vote in independence. At that time, the allocation was included within the Public Administrations department. However, this time the allocation would be an explicit competence of the Catalan Ministry for Economy and Tax Office. 

The Catalan Minister for Education, Meritxell Ruiz, asked her counterpart in the Spanish Government, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, to prove the willingness of the Spanish executive to “dialogue” by suspending the additional regulation of the Education Reform (LOMCE) which foresees that the Catalan Government has to pay 6,000 euros for each pupil who wants to receive education in Spanish in private schools. According to Ruiz, “whether this new path of dialogue actually starts or not” will depend on “the Minister’s answer to this petition”. The LOMCE “is an ideological law”, stated Ruiz this Monday, before meeting the Spanish minister in Madrid and added that the law, which now the new Spanish Government has opened to modification, “is terrible from a pedagogical perspective” and “breaks apart the Catalan education system”. 

Thirty-nine international recognised names in the field of diplomacy, economics, the arts, sports and research have been appointed members of the recently created Advisory Council of the Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia (Diplocat). The members of the body, aimed at projecting Catalonia to the world, will take part in it for a period of four years, which can be renewed, and will do so in an altruistic manner. Diplocat decided to set up this body during a plenary session held on Thursday at the Sala Tàpies at the Catalan Government headquarters, Palau de la Generalitat. Some of the most well-known names of the Council are: former US ambassador, Ambler Moss; former Mexican ambassador, Arturo Sarukhan; Representative of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Central Europe, Montserrat Feixas; businesswoman Sol Daurella; musicians Jordi Savall and Josep Carreras; Swedish MEP Bodil Valero; philosopher Josep Ramoneda; chef Carme Ruscalleda and footballer Xavi Hernàndez

Spain’s use of the courts to block the pro-independence roadmap has been reported to the 751 members of the European Parliament by three Catalan MEPs. Josep Maria Terricabras and Ernest Maragall, from left wing pro-independence party (ERC), and Ramon Tremosa, representing the Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT) have sent a letter to their colleagues in the Eurochamber lamenting what they describe as “democratic regression in Spain”. The letter criticised the summonsing of Catalan elected representatives, such as Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell, for “allowing a parliamentary debate on independence”. It also laments that former Catalan MP and current PDeCat spokesman in the Spanish Parliament, Frances Homs, faces trial for co-organising the 9-N symbolic vote on independence in 2014. 

“The Spanish Government is maintaining its judicial offensive against the Catalan Government and no one is sitting at the table but the Government of Catalonia”, reported the Catalan Government spokeswoman, Neus Munté, this Tuesday. The statement comes after Catalonia’s Supreme Court (TSJC) notified the president of the Parliament, Carme Forcadell, that she will have to testify on the 16^th of December for allowing the pro-independence roadmap to be put in vote on the 27^th of July. Forcadell's case and the prosecution of the organisers of the 9-N symbolic vote held in 2014 are not an exception, but rather an example of the monopolisation of the Catalan question in the complaints issued by the Spanish Government to the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC). According to the data offered by Munté, the TC has 18 pending appeals issued by the Spanish executive against Catalan laws and 27 more issued by the Catalan Government for conflicts of competences.

Catalonia’s Supreme Court (TSJC) has called the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell, to testify before the court on Friday the 16th of December. She is accused of “disobeying” a Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) ruling when allowing the conclusions of the committee to study the constitutive process to be assessed in the Parliament. The Court also requests testimony from the second Vice-president of the Parliament’s Bureau, José María Espejo, from Spanish Unionist ‘Ciutadans’, the Bureau’s second secretary, David Pérez, from the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) and the Bureau’s third secretary, Joan Josep Nuet, from alternative left alliance ‘Catalunya Sí que es Pot’. The Court ordered them to testify as witnesses over the pro-independence roadmap, which was put to vote in the Catalan Chamber on the 27th of July.

Catalan judge Santiago Vidal faces a three-year suspension from office for writing a draft of a theoretical Catalan Constitution. Although the proposal was not supposed to replace any Constitution or be directly adopted if Catalonia became independent but rather to steer debate by putting on the table specific constitutional articles, Catalonia’s Supreme Court (TSJC) has confirmed Spain’s Judicial Power Council (CGPJ)’s decision, announced in February 2015, and has insisted that Vidal committed “a very grave offence” and “inexcusably failed to fulfil his judicial duties”. Thus, the appeal presented by Vidal, after considering the sanction to respond to “political and ideological criteria”, has been rejected by 21 magistrates, while 11 have expressed their conformity with the appeal.  

The new delegate of the Spanish executive in Catalonia, former MP Enric Millo, took office this Monday. The representative from the Catalan branch of the conservative People’s Party (PPC) assured that he is “willing to dialogue” and emphasised his predisposition to “reduce the distances” between the Spanish and Catalan institutions. He also insisted on the need to respect the Spanish Constitution, adding that it can be “modernised” but “through dialogue and consensus rather than through imposition”. The Catalan Government’s spokeswoman, Neus Munté, described Millo as a person “who is well aware of the Catalan reality” and admitted that “it wouldn’t be difficult” to find changes compared to Millo’s predecessor, María de los Llanos de Luna, regarding the predisposition to dialogue.

The Catalan Government paid tribute last Sunday to the 309 victims and their families that have been recognised as victims of Franco’s regime since 2009, the last time such a ceremony took place. During the event, which took place in Universitat de Barcelona’s auditorium, the Catalan Minister for Foreign Affairs, Raül Romeva compared “with due respect to the obvious differences” the justice of Franco’s dictatorship and that of the current Spanish State. “Today there are still echoes of the Francoist melody” he said, referring to the “interference of the Spanish Government in the judicial system”. Moreover, Romeva stated that despite having overcome the Francoist dictatorship, which reigned in Spain from 1939 until the dictator’s death in 1975, it still has to be proved whether Spain’s democracy “is worthy of the name”.

The Spanish Government appointed this Friday former spokesman of the Catalan branch of the governing People’s Party, Enric Millo, as the new delegate of the Spanish executive in Catalonia. Millo will substitute Maria de los Llanos de Luna after a term of office which has been defined by tensions between the two governments. According to the Spanish Government’s Spokesman, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, the replacement aims to show the “negotiating disposition” of the new Spanish executive. “People are important, but disposition and willingness are even more so”, stated Méndez de Vigo before the press. Millo started his career in the Parliament in 1995 representing Christian Democrat ‘Unió’. In 2003 he joined PPC and since 2010 he has been the party’s spokesman in the Catalan Chamber.

The Catalan Socialist Meritxell Batet will no longer be part of the PSOE Board in the Spanish Parliament. The measure was announced on Thursday by the spokesman of the PSOE interim leadership, Mario Jiménez, and came after theparty held a two-hour meeting to decide the measures against the 15 MPs, including the seven members of the PSC, that broke voting discipline and rejected Rajoy’s investiture. Batet’s post as Deputy Secretary General will remain unoccupied until negotiations between the Catalan and the Spanish socialist branches “come to an end”, Jiménez said. After the announcement, Batet stated that she “accepts and respects” the decision, despite not sharing it, and that she would have preferred for the issue not to have been tackled “in this way”.

If new elections were to be called in Catalonia today, the winner would be governing cross-party pro-independence ‘Junts Pel Sí’, which would still have between 60 and 62 seats in the 135-seat Parliament. Spanish Unionist ‘Ciutadans’, which is currently the main party in the opposition with 25 MPs would get between 15 and 21 seats. The highest increase according to a poll released this Friday would be for alternative left alliance ‘Catalunya Sí que es Pot’ (CSQP) which would get 19-20 MPs compared to the 11 seats it currently has in the Chamber. On the other hand, radical left pro-independence CUP would drop from 10 seats to 6-8. Regarding pro-independence support amongst Catalans, the poll shows a return to the tie situation which has been the most common result of the polls. Thus, 44.9% of Catalans would support independence, while 45.1% would vote against it.